IPI condemns arrests of two more journalists

The IPI glob­al net­work demands the release of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists Ihar Ilyash and Dani­il Palian­s­ki, whose deten­tions were report­ed on in the space of a week by inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media.

Dani­il Palian­s­ki (L) and Ihar Ilyash. Pho­tos via Euro­ra­dio and BAJ

The deten­tion on unclear grounds of Ilyash, who is the hus­band of impris­oned Bel­sat jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va, was report­ed on Tues­day. In a video lat­er pub­lished by Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces, the jour­nal­ist “con­fessed” to hav­ing pro­vid­ed com­ments to inde­pen­dent media, on top­ics which includ­ed the impris­on­ment of his wife and Belarus’s involve­ment in Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine.

Pri­or to his arrest, Ilyash com­ment­ed on the war in Ukraine to Russia’s inde­pen­dent TV Rain. In his com­ments, he expressed the hypoth­e­sis that Rus­sia would soon coerce Belarus into impli­cat­ing itself more direct­ly in the full-scale inva­sion.

In 2021, Ilyash and Andreye­va co-authored Belaru­sian Don­bas, a book on Belaru­sians who fought on both the Russ­ian and the Ukrain­ian sides of the front. Belaru­sian author­i­ties des­ig­nat­ed the book as “extrem­ist mate­r­i­al” and banned its dis­sem­i­na­tion in Belarus.

Fol­low­ing the mass wave of anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus in 2020–21, in the course of which his wife was arrest­ed and sen­tenced to prison, Ilyash sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly refused to leave Belarus, say­ing that he would not leave the coun­try until his wife remained behind bars.

Details on the case of Palian­s­ki are less clear. Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), a trade union in exile, Palian­s­ki was most like­ly detained on Sep­tem­ber 19 after return­ing to Belarus from Rus­sia, where he was vis­it­ing rel­a­tives. The jour­nal­ist would have report­ed­ly been stopped on the road by Russ­ian secu­ri­ty forces, who lat­er accused him of insub­or­di­na­tion for refus­ing to show his doc­u­ments.

While Palian­s­ki was even­tu­al­ly able to reach Brest, his home­town in west­ern Belarus, he was lat­er arrest­ed by Belaru­sian author­i­ties and accused of “state trea­son”. Accord­ing to BAJ, Palianski’s arrest was like­ly linked to his past work as a jour­nal­ist for pri­vate and state-owned TV chan­nels in Belarus. How­ev­er, the exact rea­son for his deten­tion remains unclear.

“The deten­tion of Ihar Ilyash and Dani­il Palian­s­ki is no more than a con­tin­u­a­tion of the repres­sive prac­tices com­mon­place in Belarus under the lead­er­ship of Alexan­der Lukashenko,” said IPI Inter­im Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Scott Grif­f­en. “Dozens of jour­nal­ists have been arrest­ed since large-scale protests shook Belarus in 2020–2021. We demand the release of media work­ers who were put behind bars for noth­ing more than doing their jobs.”

Belaru­sian author­i­ties are noto­ri­ous for the inten­si­ty of their repres­sion against inde­pen­dent media, with 36 media work­ers behind bars as of Octo­ber 2024.

Belaru­sian media oper­ate in an excep­tion­al­ly hos­tile envi­ron­ment. Inde­pen­dent out­lets are banned as “extrem­ist” and are forced to oper­ate in exile as work­ing with an “extrem­ist” group is a crim­i­nal offence in Belarus.